Failure of topological rigidity results for the measure contraction property (Q2345893)

In the present paper, the authors study the necessity of the nonbranching assumption in the theory of Ricci curvature lower bounds in metric measure spaces. They focus on geometric (or topological) rigidity results. They look at two classical rigidity results from Riemannian geometry. The first result is the Cheeger-Gromoll splitting theorem saying that a Riemannian manifold \(\mathbb{M}\) with nonnegative Ricci curvature containing an infinite line segment is isometric to \(\mathbb{R}\times \mathbb{N}\) where \(\mathbb{N}\) is again a Riemannian manifold with non-negative Ricci curvature. The second rigidity result is the Cheng maximal diameter theorem stating that an \(n\)-dimensional Riemannian manifold with Ricci curvature bounded from below by \(n-1\) and with diameter \(\pi\) is necessarily the standard sphere \(\mathbb{S}^n\). After recalling some basic facts including the definition of \({\mathtt{MCP}}(K,N)\) property (the \((K,N)\) measure contraction property) and its connection to other definitions of the Ricci curvature lower bounds on metric measure spaces, the authors present some examples of \({\mathtt{MCP}}(K,N)\) spaces with nonconstant dimension. Then they study the failure of topological splitting as well as the failure of topological maximal diameter, obtaining the main results of the paper.